Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson

theirs. I worked for newspapers and freelanced for magazines. I worked at a pace that knew no hours, no limits. I would wake up in the morning, brush my teeth, and sit down at the typewriter in the same clothes I had slept in. My uncle had worked for a corporation and hated it—same thing, every day—and I was determined never to end up like him.

I bounced around from New York to Florida and eventually took a job in Detroit as a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. The sports appetite in that city was insa­tiable—they had professional teams in football, basketball, baseball, and hockey—and it matched my ambition. In a few years, I was not only penning columns, I was writing sports books, doing radio shows, and appearing regularly on TV, spouting my opinions on rich football players and hypocritical college sports programs. I was part of the media thunderstorm that now soaks our country. I was in demand.

I stopped renting. I started buying. I bought a house on a hill. I bought cars. I invested in stocks and built a portfolio. I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline. I exercised like a demon. I drove my car at breakneck speed. I made more money than I had ever figured to see. I met a dark-haired woman named Janine who somehow loved me despite my sched­ule and the constant absences. We married after a seven ­year courtship. I was back to work a week after the wed­ding. I told her—and myself—that we would one day start a family, something she wanted very much. But that day never came.

Instead, I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died, like my uncle before me, which I figured was my natural fate.

As for Morrie? Well, I thought about him now and then, the things he had taught me about “being human” and “relating to others,” but it was always in the distance, as if from another life. Over the years, I threw away any mail that came from Brandeis University, figuring they were only asking for money. So I did not know of Mor­rie’s illness. The people who might have told me were long forgotten, their phone numbers buried in some packed-away box in the attic.

It might have stayed that way, had I not been flicking through the TV channels late one night, when something caught my ear …

The Audiovisual

In March of 1995, a limousine carrying Ted Kop­pel, the host of ABC-TV’s “Nightline” pulled up to the snow-covered curb outside Morrie’s house in West New­ton, Massachusetts.

Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair. He had begun to cough while eating, and chewing was a chore. His legs were dead; he would never walk again.

Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas. He jotted down his thoughts on yellow pads, envelopes, folders, scrap paper. He wrote bite-sized philosophies about living with death’s shadow: “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”

After a while, he had more than fifty of these “apho­risms,” which he shared with his friends. One friend, a fellow Brandeis professor named Maurie Stein, was so taken with the words that he sent them to a Boston Globe reporter, who came out and wrote a long feature story on Morrie. The headline read:

A Professor’s Final Course: His Own Death

The article caught the eye of a producer from the “Night­line” show, who brought it to Koppel in Washington, D. C.

“Take a look at this,” the producer said.

Next thing you knew, there were cameramen in Morrie’s living room and Koppel’s limousine was in front of the house.

Several of Morrie’s friends and family members had gathered to meet Koppel, and when the famous man en­ tered the house, they buzzed with excitement—all except Morrie, who wheeled himself forward, raised his eye­ brows, and interrupted the clamor with his high, sing­song voice.

“Ted, I need to check you out before I agree to do this interview.”

There was an awkward moment of silence, then the two men were ushered into the study. The door was shut. “Man,” one friend whispered outside the door, “I hope Ted goes easy on Morrie.”

“I hope Morrie goes easy on Ted,” said the other.

Inside the office, Morrie motioned for Koppel to sit down. He crossed his hands in his lap and smiled.

“Tell me something close to your heart,” Morrie be­gan.

“My heart?”

Koppel studied the old man. “All right,” he said cau­tiously, and he spoke about his children. They were close to his heart, weren’t they?

“Good,” Morrie said. “Now tell me something, about your faith.”

Koppel was uncomfortable. “I usually don’t talk about such things with people I’ve only known a few minutes.”

“Ted, I’m dying,” Morrie said, peering over his glasses. “I don’t have a lot of time here.”

Koppel laughed. All right. Faith. He quoted a passage from Marcus Aurelius, something he felt strongly about. Morrie nodded.

“Now let me ask you something,” Koppel said. “Have you ever seen my program?”

Morrie shrugged. “Twice, I think.” “Twice? That’s all?”

“Don’t feel bad. I’ve only seen ‘Oprah’ once.” “Well, the two times you saw my show, what did you think?”

Morrie paused. “To be honest?”

“Yes?”

“I thought you were a narcissist.” Koppel burst into laughter.

“I’m too ugly to be a narcissist,” he said.

Soon the cameras were rolling in front of the liv­ing room fireplace, with Koppel in his crisp blue suit and Morrie in his shaggy gray sweater. He had refused fancy clothes or makeup for this interview. His philosophy was that death should not be embarrassing; he was not about to powder its nose.

Because Morrie sat in the wheelchair, the camera never caught his withered legs. And because he was still able to move his hands—Morrie always spoke with both hands waving—he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life.

“Ted,” he said, “when all this started, I asked myself, ‘Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most peo­ ple do, or am I going to live?’ I decided I’m going to live—or at least try to live—the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

“There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I’m so angry and bit­ter. But it doesn’t last too long. Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live …’

“So far, I’ve been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don’t know. But I’m betting on myself that I will.”

Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.

“Well, Fred,” Morrie said accidentally, then he quickly corrected himself. “I mean Ted … “

“Now that’s inducing humility,” Koppel said, laugh­ing.

The two men spoke about the afterlife. They spoke about Morrie’s increasing dependency on other people. He already needed help eating and sitting and moving from place to place. What, Koppel asked, did Morrie dread the most about his slow, insidious decay?

Morrie paused. He asked if he could say this certain thing on television.

Koppel said go ahead.

Morrie looked straight into the eyes of the most fa­mous interviewer in America. “Well, Ted, one day soon, someone’s gonna have to wipe my ass.”

The program aired on a Friday night. It began with Ted Koppel from behind the desk in Washington, his voice booming with authority.

“Who is Morrie Schwartz,” he said, “and why, by the end of the night, are so many of you going to care about him?”

A thousand miles away, in my house on the hill, I was casually flipping channels. I heard these words from the TV set “Who is Morrie Schwartz?”—and went numb.